Space News & Blog Articles

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The Moon was Pummeled by Asteroids at the Same Time the Dinosaurs Died. Coincidence?

It only takes a quick look at the Moon to see its impact-beaten surface. There are craters everywhere. Some of those impact sites apparently date back to the same time some very large asteroids were whacking Earth. One of them formed Chixculub Crater under the Yucatan Peninsula. That impact set in motion catastrophic events that wiped out much of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.

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Live coverage: Firefly ready for middle-of-the-night launch from California

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of Firefly’s Alpha rocket on the “To the Black” test flight with seven small nanosatellites and picosatellites. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.

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SpaceX, NASA look at launching Dragon to service Hubble Space Telescope

Astronauts could visit the Hubble Space Telescope again someday, this time on a SpaceX Dragon.

SpaceX, NASA studying commercial crew mission to Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope in the payload bay of space shuttle Atlantis during the last servicing mission in May 2009. Credit: NASA

NASA and SpaceX will study the potential use of a commercial Dragon crew spacecraft to reboost and service the Hubble Space Telescope, a 32-year-old observatory last upgraded by a space shuttle in 2009, officials announced Thursday.

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DART Impact Seen by Hubble and Webb

What happens when you whack a little asteroid with an even littler spacecraft? People around the world watched on the 26th of September when the DART mission smashed into the side of Dimorphos. This tiny worldlet is a companion asteroid to Didymos. It was the world’s first test of the kinetic impact technique, using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid by modifying its orbit. Amateur observer networks and professional observatories tracked the meetup from the ground. In a first, both Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) took simultaneous images and data.

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NASA and SpaceX Will Study Low-Cost Plan to Give Hubble a Boost

NASA and SpaceX say they’ll conduct a feasibility study into a plan to reboost the 32-year-old Hubble Space Telescope to a more sustainable orbit, potentially at little or no cost to NASA.

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The First Telescope Images of DART's Impact are Starting to Arrive

On September 26th, at 23:14 UTC (07:14 PM EST; 04:14 PM PST), NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft successfully struck the 160-meter (525 ft) moonlet Dimorphos that orbits the larger Didymos asteroid. The event was live-streamed all around the world and showed footage from DART’s Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO) as it rapidly approached Dimorphos. In the last few seconds, DART was close enough that individual boulders could be seen on the moonlet’s surface.

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Firefly ready for another try to launch test flight of smallsat rocket

Firefly’s Alpha rocket stands on its launch pad Sept. 29 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: Brian Sandoval / Spaceflight Now

After a delay of several weeks due to technical issues, bad weather, and a busy launch range, Firefly Aerospace is set to try again early Friday to send its commercial small satellite launcher into orbit on a test flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

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Ingenuity Mars helicopter notches 33rd Red Planet flight

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter has taken flight again, staying aloft for nearly a minute this past weekend on its 33rd extraterrestrial sortie.

DART asteroid crash seen by James Webb, Hubble space telescopes (photos)

The James Webb Space Telescope and its older counterpart Hubble photographed the impact of NASA's asteroid-smashing DART probe into the space rock Dimorphos on Monday (Sept. 26).

Watch SpaceX, NASA and Hubble officials discuss mysterious new study today

NASA, SpaceX and Hubble officials will hold a press conference today (Sept. 29) to discuss "potential commercial space opportunities for NASA science missions," and you can watch it live.

SOFIA Airborne Observatory Has Taken Its Final Flight

The flying observatory has been grounded due to its lofty price-tag and questionable productivity, causing an outcry among astronomers

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Astronaut looks inside eye of Hurricane Ian from space as storm weakens over Florida (photos)

An International Space Station astronaut photographed Hurricane Ian as the powerful storm battered Florida. NASA, SpaceX and others have postponed launches from the Space Coast.

Testing Time for Mars

Swiss watch brand Omega has teamed up with ESA to launch the Marstimer: the first watch to display the time on Earth and Mars. Developed in partnership with ESA’s Mars exploration teams and tested at ESA ESTEC, this new watch is space-tough and Mars-mission ready.

Robots Might Jump Around to Explore the Moon

How great are wheels, really? Wheels need axles. Suspension. Power of some kind. And roads, or at least swaths of relatively flat and stable terrain. Then you need to maintain all of it. Because of their cost many civilizations across human history, who knew all about wheels and axles, didn’t bother using them for transportation. Another way to look at it – much of human technology mimics nature. Of the simple machines, levers, inclined planes, wedges, and even screws are observed in nature. Why not the wheel?

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RoboCop streaming guide: Where to watch the RoboCop movies online

Practice that pistol twirling and poke out that strong chin, here's how to watch the RoboCop movies online for the maximum amount of justice.

Wobbly Star Reveals the Closest Black Hole Yet

The most compelling dormant stellar-mass black hole candidate in the Milky Way orbits a Sun-like star only 1,570 light-years away.

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Nikon Z9 review

The Nikon Z9 is a mirrorless powerhouse, one of the top-performing digital cameras ever made and delicious overkill for astrophotography and landscapes.

James Webb Space Telescope spots 'Sparkler Galaxy' that could host universe's 1st stars

The first deep-field image revealed from the James Webb Space Telescope hid a wealth of treasure including a sparkling galaxy that could host the universe's first stars.

Innovation to combat space debris – Chinese scientists introduce drag sail  

Scientists at the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) have devised an ingenious way to combat the growing problem of space debris. The team fitted a drag sail to a Long March 2 rocket and successfully launched it in July this year. Rocket launches often leave discarded booster stages in low-earth orbit, adding to the pollution of near-earth space. The pilot testing for the sail came as a surprise to many space agencies when, a day after the rocket’s launch, the 25 square meters deorbiting sail was unfolded.

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